Facebook’s Data Scandal Didn’t Hurt Usage Stats

Facebook is still dealing with the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal which resulted in the personal information of millions of Facebook users being leaked. This led to the beginning of a #deleteFacebook trend on other social media networks but the movement, for lack of a better word, doesn’t seem to have had any material impact on Facebook’s usage stats. A new report reveals that Facebook’s usage stats were actually up during the time when the scandal was constantly in the news cycle.

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A client note from Goldman Sachs cites ComScore figures which reveal that Facebook’s unique users in the United States surged 7 percent year-over-year to 188.6 million last month which was the time when Facebook was in the middle of the Cambridge Analytica storm. The report also mentions that time spent on Facebook also went up during this time.

Many had billed the data misuse scandal as the biggest crisis that Facebook had ever faced in the history. Some were even talking about the company’s future in uncertain terms but now it seems that the company can weathered the storm relatively unscathed.

Another report from Deutsche Bank mentions that its advertising system checks have revealed that the over half a billion fake accounts that Facebook deleted in the first quarter of this year have had “little to no impact” on audience reach. The report also mentioned that ad targeting across all demographics has actually grown during this period.

Facebook’s stock price had taken a hit as well when reports about the scandal were published but even the stock has made full recovery. As they say, all’s well that ends well.